Fully templed out – Madurai and Trichy

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I would like to start today’s entry with a little gloating, never a good way to start I know. I’m sorry to start off in such a rude manner but I’m afraid it really must be done. I would like to let all of you in cold, wet and windy Britain know that to this date it has only rained once since I arrived in India and I don’t believe we have had a single cloudy day. Yes your right, I am a smug ****. The one time it did actually it did so at night so we didn’t even get wet, no surprises for guessing where it rained, my favourite Indian town ever (not), Cochin. Would be wouldn’t it. Anyway it’s pretty damn amazing that in over a month I haven’t seen a drop of rain or even anything but a blue cloudless sky, thank you India. Commiserations to all of you at home.

I was super tired waking up in Madurai, maybe it was the long drive the day before, maybe the 4 bottles of Kingfisher strong or maybe the post Varkala hangover finally kicking in. Whatever it was I was not the only person feeling it, several people appeared to be tired and in a foul mood. Not perfect conditions for what would be a long day with 3 temple viewings. Our long suffering but ever patient tour leader Jenny had a particularly torrid time in the morning by having to deal with an unusually uncooperative group before later getting her foot run over by a motorbike. I was very impressed that Jenny didn’t make a big deal about it at all and just got on with her job/day. It must be tough in these situations to maintain your professionalism, I really admire Jenny and other tour leaders as they really do have to deal with so much.

We were in Madurai to visit the Sri Meenakshi- Sundareshwarar temple, one of the busiest and largest in South India, the Rough Guide describes the temples gopuras (pyramid like structures) as “the greatest man made spectacle of the South”. The temple is dedicated to both Shiva and Meenakshi who were married and lived in Madurai from which they ruled the Pandya kingdom.

The temple was surrounded by a large pedistrianised area, the first (and probably last) I have seen in India, it was heavenly! The temple complex is to use a much misused/overused word (often by myself), epic, epic in both size and stature. The four gates to the temple are each topped by large, brightly (some may say gaudily) coloured and intricately carved gopuras) which contain carvings of 1,001 gods related too or incarnations of Shiva/Meenakshi. The gopuras are spectacular, the carving is not only extraordinarily intricate but also impressive in it’s sheer quantity, I imagine the gopuras took a very long time complete (we were probably told how long but I have forgotten, apologies, C- try harder next time). Madurai temple is very much a working temple and was full of local and non local worshippers, apparently around 15,000 people visit the temple every day. It was probably the most spiritual temple I have visited in India, it felt like an Oasis of calm in a town/country of craziness. The temple was full of chanting worshippers (some, including women, with fully shaven heads) and holy men who often appeared in a trance like state. The spirituality and devotion of the worshippers was really quite moving, it felt like a privilege to glimpse people worshipping in a temple which was obviously of great importance to them.

I really enjoyed the Meenakshi temple but after our visit I was feeling pretty tired, pissy and really not in the mood for the afternoon drive and double temple visit we had scheduled in Trichy, our next stop.

We visited both temples in Trichy, one was built on top of a rock and was unsurprisingly called the rock fort. The temple, which is dedicated to Ganesh was average and nothing worth getting excited about, it did however have pretty decent views over the city, but was it worth the 400 step climb? Probably not in all honesty, but then again I was in a bad mood and it was really bloody hot. The second temple, Sri Ranganathaswamy is apparently the largest Hindu temple complex in India and is spread across 60 hectares. It was impressive in it’s size but the actual temples in the complex were spread quite far apart and not particularly impressive, in fact in parts the temple looked like an unfinished building site (oh dear I was having a day). Ranganathaswamy temple like Meenakshi temple in Madurai is very much a working temple, however it was so crazy and busy that I didn’t get the same sensation of it being a spiritual place, especially with all the motorbikes, rickshaws and cheap tat traders who were making an unholy amount of noise on the outskirts of the complex. It’s a shame that both of the temples in the afternoon were of little interest, although I guess we have been spoilt and a little overloaded with temples on this tour and in all honesty temples aren’t of massive interest to me. On another note we didn’t have a guide for the Trichy temples which probably didn’t help endear me to the temples.

Tomorrow we would be heading to Pondicherry (known as Puducherry these days) where we pleasingly wouldn’t have to look at any more temples.........

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